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City Lifeline customers who came to the Christmas Party last year will remember The Prophet – a most excellent bar and restaurant in Shoreditch that we took over for an evening of fun, drinks and the ability to encourage customers to talk to each other and to the City Lifeline staff and directors about colocation in London and related issues. Some months later, The Prophet and the rest of the entertainment complex it was in caught fire and burnt down. We always hoped this was nothing to do with the City Lifeline customers or staff (it was a good party, but it wasn’t that wild), and the subsequent investigation showed it was all down to one IKEA candle. The article below is from the London Evening Standard (whose copyright is acknowledged).

It started with a kiss: moment of passion led to £40m City fire

It was a huge inferno that engulfed the City in thick smoke and took more than 100 firefighters to put out.

But the blaze at Sosho nightclub in Shoreditch that devastated several buildings and caused an estimated £40 million of damage was today blamed on an innocent kiss.

The fire in March reduced the night-club and neighbouring private members’ club The East Room – which had a combined turnover of £5 million – to blackened shells. Jonathan Downey, owner of both clubs, today told how the blaze that was caused by an Ikea tea light could have been prevented if it were not for a couple kissing in one of the booths. CCTV footage shows how a waitress lighting candles at the club at 6pm refrained from lighting one of them because of the couple.

She returned to light it half an hour later, but at the end of the night it was forgotten about.

All the other eight-hour candles had gone out by closing time at 2am; however the one candle remained alight.

After watching the fire take hold in real time on the CCTV, Mr Downey said: “We realised the reason the waitress couldn’t light the candle at the same time as the others was because she couldn’t get into the booth because she didn’t want to disturb the couple who were having a snog.”

The fire needed 20 engines to put it out and brought nearby City Road to a standstill. By about 5am it had spread across four floors and the neighbouring buildings. No one was injured. Six months after the fire, insurance company Royal Sun Alliance has not paid out, leaving Mr Downey tens of millions of pounds out of pocket.

The entrepreneur, who owns several bars and clubs across the capital including Milk and Honey, plans to reopen The East Room by Christmas at a site nearby. He said: “Even though the cause of the fire is clear, even though it’s on CCTV and even though it’s exactly what you have insurance for, they’re refusing to pay it at the moment.”

A spokesman for Royal Sun Alliance said: “Based on the information given to us so far we do not believe there was insurance cover in place.”